Get Ready for Digital Health

Digital health is defined as, ‘digital technologies that are used to improve the health of an individual so that he contributes to the society effectively’. It expands the concept of eHealth to include digital consumers, with use of a wide range of smart devices. It also utilises the internet, artificial intelligence (AI), big data and robotics. Digital health applies digital transformation to healthcare. The digital care program that incorporates software, hardware and services will have an impact on diagnosis, prevention, monitoring and treatment of a disorder, and make medicine more personalised and precise. Digital technologies bring about accuracy and efficiency to healthcare.¹

Digital health encompasses mobile health (mHealth) apps, electronic health records (EHRs), electronic medical records (EMRs), wearable devices, telehealth & telemedicine and personalized medicine.

The program utilises the information and communication technologies to solve the health issues faced by people. It utilises both hardware and software services, including wearable devices to ingestible sensors, mobile health apps, text messages, telemedicine, digital diagnostic tests, digital therapeutics, virtual and augmented reality.²

Considerable developments have taken place in the medical field such as digital medicine, genomics, artificial intelligence and robotics which are bound to make enormous impact on patients in the coming decades. Healthcare workforce must be prepared to deliver the digital future. Eric Topol, an eminent US Cardiologist with a long track record in digital health has compiled a detailed review on the subject. The result of Topol Review was to prepare the healthcare workforce to deliver digital health.³

Digital technologies are providing strategies to empower patients to participate actively in their own care with focus on their well-being, to take preventive steps against diseases, to predict appropriate treatments and to personalise the management of chronic ailments. This will transform the traditional doctor-patient relationship. There has been transformation in accepting the utilisation of smartphones and wearables to track vital signs such as heart rate and abnormal rhythms, blood pressure and blood glucose.

Digital healthcare technology includes the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) that combines medical devices and applications connecting to health information technology systems using networking technologies. The Internet of Things (IoT), by using cases from telemedicine technology improves communication between patients and doctors. MHealth has provided access to health care support and monitoring of chronic disorders. Personal health monitoring has been made possible with wearables that include heart rate monitoring, pulse oximetry, electrocardiography and continuous glucose monitoring. Blackchain-based EMR has facilitated quick access to patient information. AI has helped in speeding up decision-making. Large amounts of data gathered is digitized and fed to big data to be processed by machine learning algorithms. The analysis of patient records help in reducing medication errors and facilitates preventive care.⁴

Through digital health technologies, public health campaigns can be undertaken to educate them on modifiable risk factors in occurrence of obesity, hypertension, and smoking. The results obtained from the diagnostic tests enable us to recognise the disease and plan personalised/stratified treatments.

To undertake such a management strategy, the doctors have to be trained for digital therapeutics by utilising evidence-based apps. As days pass, the thrust will be on disease prevention, improvement in health and wellbeing. Telephone triage including online consultations, and video calls will become routine in the years to come in patient care. The patients need not take time off from work and visit the clinic. The clinicians can devote more time attending to more complex and serious cases. The healthcare workforce needs training in digital technologies to provide better quality care.

Topol says that it is hard to predict the future.³ Artificial intelligence, digital medicine and genomics are likely to have an enormous impact on improving efficiency and precision in healthcare. For this new technology to be successful, change in behaviour of the people and health workforce is needed. The health workforce must be digitally literate for the specific needs of the patients. Digital readiness programs through workshops on use of computational technologies, smart devices, computational analysis techniques and communication media will be of great assistance to healthcare professionals in the management of diseases. It will also enable to promote health and wellbeing.

Digital health includes various domains such as healthcare technology assessment, management and monitoring of patients, and undertaking long-term care. Doctors need training in clinical decision making by analysing and interpreting the patient-related data.

The Topol review stated that the focus must be on the patient when assessing and implementing any new technology.³ It pointed that there is remarkable potential for digital healthcare technologies in improving accuracy of diagnoses and treatments, the efficiency of care, and workflow for healthcare professionals. It cautioned that its implementation must be carried out only with robust clinical validation. Patients who are willing to take greater charge of their care using digital tools and algorithms will be empowered. The doctor-patient relationship can be improved by utilising the time delivered by the introduction of these technologies.

According to World Health Organization (WHO), digital health should be an integral part of health priorities and provide benefit in an ethical, safe, secure, reliable, equitable and sustainable way to people.⁵ Digital health solutions respond to epidemic and pandemic situations, and facilitate countries to utilise the health data to promote health and well-being of its citizens. There is an urgent need to improve digital health literacy in utilising and understanding digital health technologies.

Digital technology is bringing a revolution in health care. Digital health tools are establishing their role in diagnosis and management. Smartphones, social networking and internet applications are facilitating improved patient care.

Conflict of Interest

None